30K Hills, Mimosas, and 3 Hours of Sleep!

I've been bad about blogging since I got back from Chicago and I know everyone of you (mom, me, maybe one or two others) have waited for a new post to come along in your life like a... I've been working on the simile for too long and it was becoming very lame and juvenile so I'll just let you insert one of your own here ____here______ (note: fat jokes are old and juvenile at the same time).

I want to tell everyone about the 30k race on Sunday but first I'll give a brief description to explain my mental state on race morning.

First off, I'll say I had a wonderful time in Chicago and am still smiling from the trip. It really did my heart good to be there.

I was schedule (so I thought...keep reading) to leave Chicago at 9:45pm, bringing me into Austin at a not really reasonable hour of 12:30 am Sunday morning, six and a half hours before the race gun. Its always hard to leave Chicago and my boyfriend and it always sucks but this time I didn't even get much of a chance to swim in my sad pity pool because the entire ORD airport was out to get me! No, I kid- I'm not one of those people who thinks if one thing goes wrong, everyone is out to get me.

A brief summary of what was said to me,
check in desk:
"You are not on this flight."
"Your flight took off on the 31st of December, where were you?" (drinking champagne by the fire and watching an Entourage marathon with my boyfriend)
"When did you change your booking?" (um, I didn't...)
"That will be $100 to get you on the flight"
OK, great- with some issues I got on the flight but I still don't know what happened.

security:
"Mam, you have been randomly selected for further TSA inspection, would you and your cat please step to the side."
"No, you can not put your cat back in the carrier, we have to search him too."
"Is kitty-witty nice."
ok, I'll pause here because this is the most annoying thing. His name is Mr.Furley and do NOT call him kitty-witty. He will spit his organic cat food on "kitty-witty" and then pounce on his ass!
"I just need to know if he'll scratch or bite me."
My response (honestly)- "Lady, it depends on where you touch him. Look, he's been cooped up in his carrier bag without meds, now you are having me hold him and asking to feel him up? Seriously, I give him free reign to scratch anyone who comes by." Really? Do you think he's holding an sawed off under all that fur- I promise you, its just too many trips to the cat bowl and not a secret stash of WMDs.

At the gate:
"There is no seat with that number (the number on my ticket) on this plane."

Once I boarded:
"Yeah, it would be really great if we had pilots." -from the stewardess
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be honest with you. We have no heat right now and we have no pilots. We'll let you know when we know more."
5 minutes later
"Good news, we know the pilots are in Chicago- we think they are in the airport."

About 5 minutes later the pilots showed up but the plane itself had already been delayed over an hour so I didn't get to Austin until 1:30 and to my apartment until 2. I cleaned up, ate and orange and tried to get some sleep before the alarm started beeping at 5:45.

Surprisingly, it wasn't that awful getting up and going to the race. Its easier if I know other people are waiting on me. I hadn't talked to the girls in over a week so I was looking forward to a long run. We were not planning to take it hard. We did not take it hard and I think that was the smartest thing. Here's the elevation profile for the 30K- total elevation change: 4513 feet. It was rough, I'll be honest, but it was really fun and we got great medals from it.

Afterwards we hit a place for breakfast and bottomless mimosas for Jen's birthday. We had a great time. There were 10 of us total- 5 of us who did the race, one who ran the Rogue 20 miler the day before and still wonderfully got up to cheer us on (thanks so much!!!), one who ran a bit that morning on her own, and then other friends. The food wasn't outstanding but we did get our money's worth in mimosas. We kept going after we paid the check and had another few rounds. Hey, orange juice is essential in a healthy athlete's diet!

The rest of the day was really a blur- from tiredness and not the drinks my friends- of shower, bed, drink water, eat, couch, eat, couch, bed.